Updates from the Field
Over the last three months, Spark Ventures’ partner, Hope Ministries, has seen incredible progress. Read about the children moving into a new orphanage facility, progress on the Shelby Goldstein Schoolhouse, land for a new poultry farm and improved metrics and accountability for measuring our progress at helping vulnerable children achieve their potential.
Hope House
In an exciting development, the children of Hope House, the orphanage operated by Hope Ministries, were able to move into the newly built home in February. After months of waiting and daily trips to the electricity company, the new Hope House is now fully powered, and the older boys have even started to help paint the rooms. It has quickly become home to the 16 Hope House children who now each have their own beds in their beautiful new home.
Hope Community School
The Shelby Goldstein Schoolhouse, in operation since the beginning of the school year in January, continues to be improved step by step, becoming an even stronger and more effective institution of learning. Ceiling boards are being added to the classrooms to ensure that classes can continue despite the frequent and loud rains of the rainy season. The student lavatories have been built and are currently being tiled, ensuring the hygiene and thus health and safety of the over three hundred students who otherwise would not have access to hygienic facilities.
Local Income Generator
Spark Ventures and Hope Ministries are making great strides into the third phase of their partnership, working to create financial independence and long-term sustainability for Hope Ministries and our collaborative work with the vulnerable children of Zambia. After the end of the successful Sustaining a Future Campaign in February, Hope Ministries has been able to secure a plot of land just outside Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, on which the poultry farm will be built. Spark and Hope are in a planning phase that will lead to the construction and operation the farm in the coming months, an exciting step in an already remarkable partnership.
Metrics & Accountability
In line with both Hope Ministries’ and Spark Ventures’ commitment to accountability, we are working together to develop reporting structures and metrics for Hope’s current and future programs. The goal is to ensure that the investments in our partner Hope Ministries are used to do the most good for the children they serve. Hope Ministries now does monthly tracking of enrollment, attendance and meals served by grade level, a set of new and refined metrics that will help measure the success of Hope’s programs as well as its partnership with Spark.
Spark also receives monthly breakdowns of Hope’s expenses and income, allowing Hope’s activities a greater level of transparency and accountability and allowing Spark to provide the same transparency and accountability to its investors. Reporting and metrics will continue to be refined as Hope and Spark dive even deeper into the planning and construction of the poultry farm, which will provide self-sustaining support for Hope’s programs helping to nourish, educate and care for hundreds of children.
